


Your Tears Leave Streaks Across Your Face

by YamiXenara



Series: The Spellwound Order [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, And POV third person, Dark Magic, Established Relationship, Horror, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Hurt/ Brief Comfort, I Really Need to Stop Beating On Obi-Wan, M/M, Magic, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi Whump, POV Obi-Wan Kenobi, POV Second Person, Purple Prose, Star Wars Universe but With Magic Instead of the Force, Which Isn't Really Comforting if You've Read Contradiction, now with art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26439049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiXenara/pseuds/YamiXenara
Summary: For a brief luminary moment, you truly become whole. For perhaps the first time in your miserable, pathetic existence, you know what it is to be a truewonder-child.  But every height has its lowest point, and every high has a crash. The ebb and flow of a tide dragging you back into the ever-consuming depths of an endless ocean of agony.-0-Something is wrong with Obi-Wan and no-one knows what. Something is wrong with Obi-Wan and he can feel the tar black thorns clawing their way down his throat.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Series: The Spellwound Order [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899223
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after Contradiction. Not an answer, but the beginning of one. May write a second chapter, which will probably be (IF written) entirely fluff, or I might just post something separate which is complete fluff so yeah. 
> 
> Anyway, If you think I need to add more tags, lemme know- Besides that: ENJOY!
> 
> If you like, lemme know what you enjoyed about it! I really do want to improve my writing and any feedback is quality feedback! Also Just reached 20 000 words across the series - which is a tiny amount of writing to some, but for me who struggles with sticking to stories? Massive!

Your name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and you think there’s something wrong with you. It’s a palpable sense of unease, the growing dread that ensnares the senses and sends cold shivers down your spine. It’s not an overt feeling. Nothing you could put your finger on, but it lingers beneath your skin and trails fingers down your spine. It started, you think, a few weeks ago – maybe a month if you were stretching it, and it began with little things. Glimpses of something moving out of the corner of your eyes as you walked along empty halls. Whispers in the night as you try to sleep. Your reflection appearing warped in mirrors for the briefest of flightiest moments, almost appearing as if you had black vines wrapping around your neck… 

It’s almost as if you are being constantly watched, or maybe just constantly hyperaware. It’s that slowly rising paranoia that makes people double their steps and glance over their shoulders. Like a shroud of unease falling around you, like feeling unsafe even in your own warm bed. The feeling begins to grow stronger, that lingering unease beginning to escalate into prominent dread. Speaking became so much harder, for how did you know who could be trusted? These halls were growing darker day by day and… Paranoia is a dangerous phenomenon. It can grow and grow until those whom are affected by it, isolate themselves completely in their own fear. You think you might be hiding.

It’s Qui-Gon who hunts you down, worried deeply about your increasingly caustic behavior, your growing erraticism. You believe he might have a point, as now the shadows grow longer and their twisted fingers claw at your robes as you pass. He thinks you may have been cursed; by Ventress or Dooku, or one of your many growing enemies. Maybe, even, one of your allies…. _No stop, you know he didn’t say that, why would you think that? It’s crazy, irrational, but…_

You don’t know what’s happening, but you think… you know it might be dark. Day by day goes past and you find yourself scratching at your neck with your nails. The skin drawn too tight, too itchy, as you claw strips of white from your neck like flakes of dried paint. The splashes are hard to hide, the paint spread and blooms further down your chest and you _scratch and scratch and scratch the itch._

It’s like hundreds of eyes are constantly staring you down like you can feel every inch of their inhuman gazes on your skin. It blooms in the brief, silent moments you have alone to your own thoughts. You are starting to hate being alone. Friends of yours, other than Qui-Gon, are beginning to notice your sudden withdrawal. Their concern rings in your ears like a pained dying thought, slipping through the broken pieces of a slowly fracturing psyche. You may be going mad, and the _voices keep on talking_. Endless hours thrown into frantic research; fingers leaving bloodied smears of books of flimsy and parchment both as you flick through them wanting, needing, desperately, answers. Nothing, nothing, more nothing, rituals, chants, bindings, more and more you search, tumbling effortlessly into fanaticism. Your sleep is haunted by dreams swathed in red and dripping, oozing misery into your memories. Your skin feels like its crawling, like _bugs_ are trapped beneath, and your neck hurts and prickles and _bulges_ when you look at it from the right angle. Like there’s something growing below your flesh. You must get it _out_. 

You wake encased in white, the steady beeping of machines and a sickly-sweet scent like bacta and treacle and _roses_. You call out for help with a parched mouth. Every word tastes like the scent of rot and flowers. It was cold, so kriffing cold. Your breath leaves icy trails in the air as you exhale, your beard pulls and drags against your throat as you try and look. You need to leave, escape from the constant beeping, and the prickling collar of thorns trying to gouge their way out of your throat. That tear and scratch at the soft giving flesh within. You know Healer Che has you on a watchlist of some kind, but as soon as her, their, backs are turned you flee, you flee and stumble and _fall_.  
It’s Anakin that pulls you from your free fall. You’d forgotten how quiet your mind has been, his wants and will, and wishes blocked behind durasteel walls constructed so perfectly you couldn’t even tell you had erected them. But they, like so much, had fallen in your spiral – and there he was; a pillar to crash yourself against. To claw and scream and tremble as he holds you close and whispers desperate pleas into your hair. Please come back, please calm, Obi-Wan _please,please,please,Idon’tKnowWhat’sWrong_ – Even Anakin, strong, brave Anakin doesn’t know how to help you, but oh does he try. _I’mSorryI’mSorryIDidn’tKnowWhatItDidIWantedYouBackPleaseNotLikeThisItHurtsObi._

His words make no sense in your head, but you know they’re important even as they bleed from your ears and your eyes and your mouth as you choke and shudder and cry out crimson red petals that swirl in the air and fall in sticky streams of decaying black tar. And fall. And fall. Your mouth tacky with it. Yet he still holds you, he still holds you even as vines wrap around your neck and choke the air from your lungs. He holds you as you wail and the earth _shatters_ around you. As the skies fall and the eyes watch, and you open. You open beneath him like the sweet petals of a flower bursting into bloom as you draw his blood and weep as everything he is and will be fills you. It hurts. It _burns_. Like holding a supernova to your chest and swallowing down the light of two dying twin binary suns. He hollows you out and fits in to the place ripped from you; that had long been ripped from you – Anakin’s space that lives between your lungs and the hollowed spaces in your heart. For a brief, luminary moment, you truly become whole. For perhaps the first time in your miserable pathetic existence, you know what it is to be a true _wonderchild_. But every height has its lowest point, and every high has a crash. The ebb and flow of a tide dragging you back into the ever-consuming depths of an endless ocean of agony. 

Anakin’s voice screams hysterical in your ears, as you sink into deep comforting darkness.

\--0—

Obi-Wan wakes to a soft cream shaded room, and healing-hall white sheets. A heartbeat monitor stood next to his bed on one side, softly bleeping out his currently tranquil heartrate. A needle was stuck in his arm and currently hooked up to a drip of some kind. His head felt muddled, and his throat when cleared, felt raw. The other side of the bed contained a slumped over Anakin, face pale and drawn and eyes fluttering beneath his lids as he slept. His breathing was a slow and measured sound that brought a soft smile to Obi-Wan’s face, and one of his hands was softly holding on to one of Obi-Wan’s own. He was overcome with a wave of fondness for the younger man, who so obviously fretted at his ill health. He tried to think back at what had gotten him stuck in the healing halls and drew a blank. He frowned, a growing sense of dread forming, the last thing he remembers was being on the Negotiator on his way back to Coruscant. He remembers being upset with Anakin over constantly pushing their bond, and Anakin reluctantly apologizing… but nothing after that. 

The heart monitor’s beeping sped up, and Anakin startled awake with a look of fear. A sense of fear that Obi-Wan could feel more strongly than his own.

“Obi-Wan!” He gasped out before his gaze settled on the man himself. Obi-Wan raised a brow and twitched his lips into a drawn sort of smile. Softly, he tried to calm his young lover down. Waves of reassurance sent through their connection. Something bright, joyful, even through Obi-Wan’s exhaustion.

“Yes, Anakin? Are you quite alright? You seem to be, well, ‘panakin’ a bit my love.” Anakin gaped at him with a soft sort of disbelief, before his expression twisted into abject misery. “That wasn’t the response I was hoping for Anakin, what is- ” Obi-Wan was cut off as Anakin burst into an awful keening whine, his eyes glossy with tears yet shed. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Obi-Wan you almost died, you _did_ d-die! Your heart stopped and you were convulsing on the ground and,” Anakin hiccupped, his breath coming in high pitched wheezes as he continued, “and you were screaming at the end, this awful inhuman noise, and you just wouldn’t stop. You were bleeding magic Obi-Wan. And blood! But… kriff it was…” he choked a bit, “No one has ever seen anything like it, I manage to… I did something and it fixed the worst of it… but you were still bleeding out – and Obi, it looked like you’d tried to tear your own throat out!” Obi-Wan’s breath hitched, one hand coming up to feel at his throat; only to meet a thick barricade of bandages.

“Well, I guess that explains why my throat hurts then.” He managed to say, Anakin immediately sat up and entered fussing mode.

“Your throat hurts? Do I need to call Healer Che in to look at it?” Obi-Wan shook his head and tightened his grip on Anakin’s hand. He sent a thought through, _stay, please. I need you here, love._ It was easy; effortless. It felt… changed. Their bond had always been overpowering, but still over. Obi-Wan had always felt uncomfortable with Anakin having such a large space in his head – it made everything seem too loud, too crowded. But now, it was quiet. But know it felt more, more connected maybe, or better fitting. It was a seamless two-way street where it was once a patchwork connection. Obi-Wan wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

“What happened to me, do you know?” Anakin went still. His eyes rimmed with red and still so very glossy, darkened. The sheer weight of the emotions that flew off him were overwhelming and indecipherable. 

“I wasn’t on Coruscant for most of it, so I don’t know the whole story. But from what I could make out, about a month ago you started acting strange. It wasn’t super noticeable at first, but you became paranoid, you started pushing people away. It escalated, you started talking to yourself, hurting yourself, you complained about hearing and feeling things that weren’t there. Qui-Gon noticed some of the symptoms were recognizable as dark magic. Healer Che was of the opinion you were suffering from something much less magical. It turned out to be magic, and we all found out just how much you were suffering too late.” He breathed in deeply and squeezed Anakin’s hand when he realized he couldn’t continue.

“Do you know who cast the spell? Or was it something I came across…?” Anakin looked down; his shoulders slumped.

“No.” It was said so quietly, the single word filled with such deep _shame_ and _self-loathing_. Obi-Wan couldn’t help but push himself up and lean over to place a kiss to the soft spring of curls on Anakin’s head. Of course, Anakin would beat himself up over not knowing the culprit. He’d probably run himself ragged trying to hunt them down. The thought filled him with as much dread as it did warmth.

“It’s ok, I’ll be alright. After all I have you watching over me now.” Obi-Wan slumped back into the pillows and sighed. “I’m not looking forward to whatever mush they’ll force on me, however.” He grinned over at Anakin, only to feel it falter on his face at the look on Anakin’s own. It was an expression Obi-Wan had never seen on Anakin’s face before, an expression Obi-Wan could recognize as despondent self-hatred. It was an expression Obi-Wan was determined to remove.

They will be alright; Obi-Wan after all, wasn’t dead yet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The splashes are hard to hide, the paint spread and blooms further down your chest and you scratch and scratch and scratch the itch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not great with art, but I think it gets the theme across :3


End file.
